Chrome’s adding a mouseover feature to clarify complex cybersecurity terms using analogies like zombies and postcards. On the one hand, it helps non-technical people understand some of the negative implications of some pretty complex technical attacks. On the other hand, it likens a DDOS to a high school prank, which is probably an unhelpful degree of reductivism.

This is a great article about white privilege that really speaks sensitively to why it’s so hard for many white people to acknowledge, while still standing firm on the indisputable fact that it exists. It’s a well-written, heartfelt, understanding discussion.

At twilight, Dex climbed the old tree and settled on the branch that gave him the best view of the paint-spattered wall and door. Those hooligans were going to get it this time, he thought, as he carefully trimmed a couple of small, leafy twigs that were impairing his view. When they come back tonight to finish that graffiti, I’ll make them regret the whole damned idea. At first, he hefted his little can of pepper spray with grim satisfaction over his plan, but as the evening grew darker and colder, his resolve began to waver. What if there were too many of them, if he lost the advantage, if they overpowered him?

Before the last glowing rim of day had faded from the sky Dex was back at home, still muttering about the reckoning those stupid kids needed, that one day he would surely give them.

One of the primary arguments against higher income people paying higher taxes than lower income people is that it penalizes the successful. But this argument supposes that the successful became successful in a vacuum – that they did it without receiving the benefits of other peoples’ taxes, which is clearly not the case. Elizabeth Warren put this very well last year:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you!

But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.